Water Softener Suggestions

[TelecasterSam]

Our softener is about shot. It's over 30 years old, so we're looking to replace it. A guy wants to sell me a CSI brand one. They are made in Ohio and cost $1800 installed. Has anyone heard of these? What other softeners do you recommend?
Thank you

 

[Gardo]

Rather than a traditional water softener I installed a Hahn filtration system. It requires little maintenance and doesn’t add salt or any other chemicals to the water. There is a smaller filter that I change every couple of months. The main filters are good for about 6 years depending on water use. No moving parts ,no back flushing ,no salt to add and the water is great. My wife noticed when she showers that her hair and skin feel so much better. Not trying to sound like an ad but we like it. I installed it myself. I even modified it to fit in the corner

 

[scooteraz]

A brief look at their website (and the overall Chandler Systems company that owns CSI) leads me to believe it is a quality product. I might compare specs to what I could get at Lowes.

I ended up with a product from Lowes here in AZ. OTOH, I have professional experience in industrial water treatment for really pure water. So, I may be able to grind through water treatment specs better than some, and know what I am looking for. I can’t comment on the cost; my system for the house here included a separate whole house carbon filter, salt based softener, and under sink RO four cartridge filter, and my installed cost 2 years ago here was about $2400 (installed). Honestly, I could have done the install myself, but the $200 difference between just buying components and having all that installed; it was worth the difference.

Depending on labor costs there and the volume of the system, $1800 doesn’t sound out of line.

 

[blowtorch]

If your water is hard, it's ice. Just let it sit awhile, at room temp, and it'll be soft again


I never appreciated the well water of my parent's place, until I moved away to the big city and discovered that most folks are accustomed to horrible water that must be filtered and treated to even be drinkable

Now whenever I visit my folks (not for months now) I bring huge water bottles/tanks to refill

 

[Milspec]

Kinetico systems around here are the favorites

 

[TelecasterSam]

Thanks for the advice. We have hard well water and I thought about adding a whole house filter before the softener.

 

[bluebirdrad]

Funny we just researched this and have bought a Kinetico. It is a little more expensive but much easier to maintain.

 

[scooteraz]

On a side note, there are a LOT of misconceptions about hard water and water treatment. Hard water is just water with a lot of calcium carbonate and magnesium carbonate ions in it. These ions cause scaling that is seen in homes. These ions can be removed one of three ways.

1) Distillation (The steam does not carry much inorganic chemicals with it, the steam condensate is mostly to quite pure).
2) Ion Exchange (water softening is A form of this). Really high purity water is usually made this way with strong acids and caustics regenerating the resins that remove the ions from the water. Softeners exchange the Sodium with the calcium or magnesium in the water. The Sodium is not an added chemical, it is an exchanged chemical. Turns out that water with a couple PPB to PPM of sodium doesn’t leave scale the way that water with the Calcium and Magnesium do. Other chemicals, like Iron or Sulfur are not removed with softening and require different processes.
3) Reverse Osmosis (water from high pressure to low pressure through a special membrane). Reverse osmosis requires a lot of waste water at normal house water pressures, indeed they can be on the order of 40% efficient (10 gallons into the system result in 4 gallons of usable water).

Many systems either have just normal filtration (don’t soften but may remove some chemicals like chlorine and some heavy metals with activated carbon filters). The other option is the resins that do the ion exchange are in replaceable cartridges that are recharged at the factory with whatever chemicals required for those specific resins (brine, acid, caustic or some combination).

Softening takes care of only one potential water problem. That problem is scaling.

 

[scooteraz]

Kinetico systems around here are the favorites

Funny we just researched this and have bought a Kinetico. It is a little more expensive but much easier to maintain.

Also a solid product. The big thing that Kinetico added was a mechanical system that measured water flow, and based recharges on usage, reducing salt usage and water wastage. 20 years ago or so (when I first became aware of them) it was the latest and greatest. Most of the newer systems now measure that flow with electronics, and perform in the same way. However, one must ask how the recharges are timed. Mine is regenerated the first 2 am after x amount of gallons are used.

Not knocking Kinetico or their product. I just found the same performance here for a lower cost. YMMV.

 

[stxrus]

Not any help here. Our water is collected rain into a 42,000 gallon cistern. You can’t get much softer than that. Our filtration is two sediment filters, ons charcoal filter into a UV filter

Folks that have wells here have RO & softeners. Very expensive and not efficient

I replace the UV lamp yearly and the filters every 3-4 months

 

[WalthamMoosical]

Kinetico systems around here are the favorites

We had a Kinetico for a long while, and there were lots of things about it that were great. Didn't need electricity, and it "knew" when to recharge because of built-in metering. But what killed us eventually was the maintenance costs. After 8-10 years of nearly flawless, hands-off performance, it started failing frequently. I never did get a complete handle on what was going wrong, but the charge for a visit and repair was very high. After 15 or 20 years we changed to a more conventional system.

The reason for the high maintenance cost may have been in part that we're in a rural area, and the only repair guy needed to charge for his travel time too.

 

[TelecasterSam]

We had a Kinetico for a long while, and there were lots of things about it that were great. Didn't need electricity, and it "knew" when to recharge because of built-in metering. But what killed us eventually was the maintenance costs. After 8-10 years of nearly flawless, hands-off performance, it started failing frequently. I never did get a complete handle on what was going wrong, but the charge for a visit and repair was very high. After 15 or 20 years we changed to a more conventional system.

The reason for the high maintenance cost may have been in part that we're in a rural area, and the only repair guy needed to charge for his travel time too.

What did you end up going with?

 

[TelecasterSam]

Also a solid product. The big thing that Kinetico added was a mechanical system that measured water flow, and based recharges on usage, reducing salt usage and water wastage. 20 years ago or so (when I first became aware of them) it was the latest and greatest. Most of the newer systems now measure that flow with electronics, and perform in the same way. However, one must ask how the recharges are timed. Mine is regenerated the first 2 am after x amount of gallons are used.

Not knocking Kinetico or their product. I just found the same performance here for a lower cost. YMMV.

What would be the lower cost system similar to Kinetico? Thanks

 

[WalthamMoosical]

What did you end up going with?

Watersoft, Inc. DS32VP10B. We didn't choose it; we told our heating/water/etc. guy (with whom we've worked for decades) to choose what he thought would be best for us. We have famously hard water. The Kinetico system had two tanks so there was never a time when soft water would be interrupted during regeneration; this one is a single tank so we set the timer to regenerate in the small hours of the morning ("fortunately, I was still up playing my Telecaster and waiting for the water softener to do its thing"). We have our share of power outages so sometimes we have to reset the clock. But in the years we've had it (10?) we've never had to do anything except keep dumping salt in. "The first 2am after x amount" sounds familiar!

I don't remember how much it cost.

(link removed)

 

[Guitarteach]

Most UK cities with hard water here don’t have any such measures? It’s just extra goodness and healthy minerals.

Other than the typical scaling in kettles, is there another reason I am missing for these investments?

Just curious.

 

[ale.istotle]

Most UK cities with hard water here don’t have any such measures? It’s just extra goodness and healthy minerals.

Other than the typical scaling in kettles, is there another reason I am missing for these investments?

Just curious.

Scaling of kettles, water heaters, humidifiers, deposits on fixtures, soap/mineral residue in tubs, sinks, feel of washed hair. Bunch of reasons.

 

[joe_cpwe]

I'm in WI, we have a well and the water is pretty hard. There's some iron too but red-out salt seems to do the trick.

I replaced ours just about two years ago myself. The original system was the large plastic salt tank and a separate, heavy, softener unit.

Not endorsing the brand necessarily, but wound up buying a Morton System Saver based on size & price. It was about $300-400. The only other cost was the Shark-bite type hose connectors for the two water pipes, (link removed).

I'm not Mr handy-man but this was a pretty straightforward job.

I'm more hesitant about the hot water heater replacement that will someday come to our house. I think someone else will be doing that.

 

[scooteraz]

What would be the lower cost system similar to Kinetico? Thanks

As I mentioned, any reputable product that recharges on the basis of total flow as opposed to a specific day and time. The product I bought here was the Krystal Pure product. It is made locally here in the Phoenix area and marketed through Lowes. The CSI you were looking at is probably fine, if it recharges based on volume. I don’t know what Kinetico charges there for an installed system, but here I got a whole house carbon filter, the largest ion exchange resin tank and an under sink RO installed for less than the cost just the softener from Kinetico.

Remember these systems are just tanks with resins in them, regenerated from a brine tank. So you have some tanks, a little tubing, some valves and a controller. They are not super sophisticated as water treatment goes. The Kinetico uses a mechanical controller. Most others today use an electronic controller. Also, the resins used for the ion exchange in the softening process will ultimately wear out. Replacement is not really much of an option, so every 15-30 years (depending on location) the system will have to be changed out.

 

[DonM]

I got a Culligan. It has worked great but I think I overpaid....a lot.

 

[Informal]

My water is about as hard as it gets, When I wash the cars, I run around like a maniac trying to dry it.

My brother has a water softener, and every time I shower, it feels like it takes me 10 minutes longer to wash off the soap/shampoo.
He say's I'm using too much product, and you get used to it, but I was there like 2 weeks ago, and used 1 small drop of shampoo... Even then I felt like I had soap and shampoo all over my body when I exited.